Serious Business or Keystone Kops?

Stripper thinks her peers are
stealing her customers, piles
and burns their lingerie.

I can hardly wait for the new Congress. There are three main reasons for my eagerness. First, I want to observe what happens to some of the new Congresspersons (especially the Tea Party candidates)when the purity of their ideological tenets run head on into the hard stones of nasty and practical political reality of Washington, D.C. It is one thing to hold ideological tenets and make grandiose promises while campaigning, but quite another when it comes to actually governing. You want to shut down the government? Try it. You want to cut the deficit, that’s easy, just reduce or eliminate Social Security. Good luck. You want to repeal Obama’s health care bill, good luck. You want to “take back our country” (whatever that means). Good luck. You are going to do away with earmarks, ha, ha, ha, good luck. Maybe you’d like to see prayer in schools, good luck. Perhaps we should shut down the Department of Education, maybe Energy too, good luck. It is always amusing when you see people so eager to force their ideas on others run up against a blank wall of unforgiving reality. And wait until our huge army of lobbyists gets to them.

What looms as even more entertaining, probably hilariously so, if they actually try to go through with it, will be their apparent plan to begin this session of Congress by reading aloud the Constitution and then demanding that anyone thereafter who presents a bill will be responsible to show how it is constitutional. Aside from the fact that the judgment of constitutionality is the ultimate responsibility of the Supreme Court (perhaps we will be able to just eliminate it), and even they do not always agree on constitutional matters, it should provide us with some truly memorable interpretations and obfuscations. In the immortal words of our recently passed (pretend) President, “Bring it on.” I would like to think we are going to see some serious business but I fear it is going to be much closer to a performance of the Keystone Kops.

Third, while I would not be so extreme as to characterize absolutely all of our Congresspersons as nitwits, there are, in my opinion, quite a large number of them there already. It will be most interesting to see how the old nitwits get along with the new nitwits (of which there are plenty). There already seems to be a split between the more established and realistic Congresspersons and these new more ideological types. Many are saying that Boehner is going to be herding cats. This could develop into a situation much worse than it is already. How serious an effect it will have on the workings of the House remains to be seen but it could be crippling.

This 111th Congress could well be the one thing that guarantees President Obama a second term. By the time they get through with their squabbling and idiocy Obama may well look like the only adult still standing. You might say this could be the best thing that happened for his Presidency. And if unemployment does begin to go down, I should think he will be virtually unbeatable. Of course at this point it is all if, if, if. Given the fact that probably 80 to 90% of what passes for “news” these days is just plain speculation, especially when it comes to the next election two years away, we might as well get used to it. And speaking of the news, I hate the last few days of the year when everyone seems to think they are obliged to review what happened during the year. I mostly know what happened and I don’t like to be reminded of it.

Anyway, there will be no blog tomorrow evening as it will be New Year’s Eve. We will be hosting the Second Annual New Year’s Eve Pea Pool Championship of Bonners Ferry. There will be great food and drink, as well as super conviviality. It promises to be a truly exciting event, everyone will doubtless be in bed by ten o’clock (we celebrate the moment it occurs in New York) as no one we know here wants to stay up past nine. So HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

LKBIQ:
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Paul Gauguin

TILT:
The American marten (pine marten), like the lynx, has large foot pads for its size, allowing it to walk on hard snow and giving it an advantage in areas of heavy snowfall.